"You aim at a devout life, dear Philothea, because as a Christian you know that such devotion is most acceptable to God's Divine Majesty," says St. Francis de Sales in his book "Introduction to the Devout Life".
And we can all be Philotheas, as St. Francis notes: "I have made use of a name suitable to all who seek the devout life, Philothea meaning one who loves God."

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Monday, February 25, 2013

NFP: Trojan Horse in the Catholic Bedroom?

Update: Now available in paperback and on Kindle!I’ve
almost completed the process of publishing a book which is a compilation of my posts
on NFP; it’s entitled Natural Family Planning: Trojan Horse in
the Catholic Bedroom? The book will
probably be available on Amazon by the end of this week – I’ll keep you posted!
In the meantime, I’m posting the “Conclusion” of the book.

ConclusionMarriage is intended to be fruitful; God said so Himself!
God's plan for the sanctification of the married couple includes their
cooperation with God in procreating new souls destined for Heaven. NFP doesn't
explicitly fly in the face of such an understanding, but it is dramatically not submissive to God. NFP is all about
a degree of control that is objectionable in any traditional Catholic
understanding of marriage or Catholic spirituality in general.

NFP promoters attempt to elevate non-abstinence (that is, the circumvention of the need to abstain
from the marital embrace) to the level of a virtue, achieved by gaining
knowledge of God's designs so as to frustrate them. In other words, NFP
promoters see the marital act as having “unitive” value that trumps its
procreative value; therefore, engaging in marital intimacy when there is no
risk of pregnancy is considered good in and of itself.

But sex is not an
end in itself. To long for sexual pleasure but seek to avoid its consequences
is, objectively, concupiscence seeking a remedy. Certainly we would say this of
an unmarried couple (it’s called “fornication”). The traditional understanding
of marriage is threefold: 1) the procreation and education of children; 2)
mutual care and support for the married couple in their journey to Heaven; and
3) a remedy for concupiscence. And once upon a time, people actually got
married first and then realized those
ends. Nowadays, people seek the “remedy for concupiscence” (i.e., sex) first,
and only afterwards might consider
the other two ends. In the past, some couples probably got married primarily as
a remedy for concupiscence, knowing that indulging their sexual appetites might
lead to pregnancy; today we have a Pill to take care of the anxiety about the
possibility of pregnancy, and many consider that license to satisfy their
sexual appetites outside of marriage.

Taking the traditional view of marriage, if a man and a
woman long to engage in the marital act, but are not prepared to have children,
they should postpone marriage until they are truly “open to life”. They should
not be thinking of ways to have sex that allow them to avoid that “consequence.”

The same goes for a married couple, really. When a married
couple thinks the time is not right for pregnancy, the first option is
abstinence; but, if desire is too strong, then charity demands that they engage
in the remedy for their concupiscence. This remedy may be NFP. NFP as a “remedy
for concupiscence” sounds, to me, a lot more honest in its presentation than
touting it as a “way of life” or a “virtue.” From a marketing standpoint,
though, NFP as a “remedy for concupiscence” doesn’t sound nearly as appealing
as “NFP as a way of life”, or “God’s plan for the family”.

It seems silly to claim that one is “open to children” when
one is organizing one's life around having sex not likely to be fruitful! The
NFP “way of life,” when not practiced to achieve
pregnancy, is all about sterile sex – sex that is meant only to make the
couple feel good, with no consequences attached to that pleasure. The “background
music” of the NFP way of life is always about sexual intimacy: “when we can,
when we should, when we can't, and when we shouldn't”.

Our culture has a lot to do with our understanding of human
sexuality. In a recent article addressing this issue, an insightful author
notes that “Teen
Pregnancy is Not the Problem”. Instead, she says, the problem is how the
world presents the topic of “sex”:

The world says sex is primarily
for pleasure. That sex doesn’t have to be for unity or procreation. That
everybody’s doing it. That there is something wrong with you if you aren’t.

…The world tells us to act on all our urges as
soon as possible. To get what we want, when we want it, always. To control our
fertility instead of ourselves if we aren’t prepared to become parents.

...It’s time to use our lives to tell the
world sex is primarily for procreation and unity…

Couples marry today with certain expectations about both
marriage and sex shaped by public media. Sex is supposed to be “good” with a “good
partner” and “personally satisfying”; in other words, sex is “all about the
couple” – a variation on the theme of “it’s all about me”.

People enter marriage
today with a culturally-conditioned expectation that “sex is like what I've
seen in the movies” – which is to say it looks really great, and fun, and
exciting! The NFP ideology (and that is what it is) does little to teach the
true meaning of marriage, sex, or chastity, but is an unwitting participant in
the unchaste sexuality that is rampant in our culture. To teach engaged couples
about “family planning” of any kind is conceding that “family planning”
(a.k.a., birth control) is a presumed need and value in today's Catholic
marriages.

Certainly, today, the Church is failing badly in this area.
Part of the reason for that stems from the 1960’s Church taking seriously the
warnings from secular “experts” that the world was becoming overpopulated.
Birth control was cautiously embraced because
Church leaders didn’t recognize the errors in the overpopulation argument. The
apparent needs of the temporal world loomed larger than the spiritual needs of
parents that are met through generous parenthood providentially orchestrated by
God. It seems as though, for a brief moment, Church leaders wondered if God
maybe needed a little help in controlling population: hence, the concept of “responsible”
parenthood, and the subtle movement from condoning periodic abstinence in
certain serious situations to the idea that couples should rely on their own
consciences to determine when to conceive a child.

I predict that, in the future, the Church will clarify what
it teaches today, dramatically redefine the “serious reasons” necessary for use
of NFP, and encourage it as a “remedy for concupiscence” rather than a
positive, virtuous practice. My prediction stems in part from my belief that
what is being taught today, and the verbiage being used to teach it, is, for
the most part, wrong – at least on the very liberal end of the NFP
spectrum.

There’s another, more pragmatic reason for my prediction:
far from becoming overpopulated, the world is now beginning to suffer from the
effects of decades of population control. We need more babies. People are now
coming to an understanding of some principles of the economics of population
growth which were previously unknown, unexplored, or ignored. I’m not an expert
in this area, but even in the secular media we are beginning to see a growing
awareness and concern about the need for more young people. And so if the
Church wants to continue to meet the needs of the “modern world”, She will have
to acknowledge that birth control should never be touted as a Catholic
principle, and that now more than ever Catholic couples should be open to life,
open to “generous parenthood” that puts the procreative end of marriage in its
rightful place of primacy.

Dr Boyd, You've hit on a topic that is currently on my conscience. I am an NFP teacher and I consider us faithful Catholics. However, I have been raised in this culture and it has created a struggle in just how open to life I should be. My husband and I already have 4 kids, my oldest is 5. Do I just trust God and be totally vulnerable or do we space? Already we don't look like the best model for NFP? Already I get comments wherever I go about all my children. Yet my pregnancies are not bad and my husband and I have set our lives up to receive children. Also, we have had it on our hearts to have many children long before we ever met. Please pray for us. If its just between the two of us and God, we need to just recieve children as he send them. My problem is my practical side, the battle going on in my head, and approval issues. Fortunately, there are still a few elders in the Church who just recieved the children as they came. Just knowing them helps me know that it will be okay, but there are not many left and in the generations in between I know very few families who did not control their fertility. Thank you for writing on this topic.Yukoner

Dr. Boyd,I have always been confused about the subtle difference between NFP and what many Catholics refer to as birth control (hormonal contraception and sterilization). I suspect that your argument will not be very popular in certain Catholic circles, not to mention the majority of Catholics who believe birth control is acceptable.Maybe you wrote about this in your book, but how do couples discern when the fine print applies to their situation? How do they know when they cannot afford to have more children? Also, to what length should they go to conceive more children? For couples who have tried many years to conceive but want a large family, should they seek expensive Catholic-approved surgery (I'm not talking about IVF or anything that goes against church teaching) or treatments to make them more fertile? In short, to what extent should they go about achieving a large family? I think my rambling can be summarized by the question: How do we discern God's will? And I guess I know the answer, which is through prayer, but I would like your thoughts on this.Thank you.

Anonymous, I think many of your questions are addressed in the book. You could go to the NFP tab and the top of the page to see all the posts on this blog about NFP, and by looking at the titles, you might find some that address your questions.

I have not written about the lengths couples "should" go to to conceive children, but my first reaction is that a couple should just love each other and do what comes naturally, and let God have full control. Sure, NFP can be used to increase the chances of conception, and that is not necessarily a bad thing...but it depends on how obsessive-compulsive the couple gets about it. I'm sure it is very difficult to accept that it might not be God's will for a couple to have children, but I also wonder if people don't really give God a chance on this one.

How do we discern God's will? Well, by prayer, yes, but sometimes we can lie to ourselves through what we think is "prayer". It needs to be balanced with exploring what the Church teaches, and by perhaps consulting with a holy priest.

I encourage you to look through the other posts (or buy the book!) and see if there is more there that helps you. Especially, read the sermon I transcribed on "The Duty of Motherhood".

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Catholic Contraception?

Despite the defensiveness of the promoters, the occasional critic does speak against NFP. And if one looks carefully at what the critics say, there is much to be considered. Michael Malone's book exposes many logical fallacies in the arguments of NFP promoters, and asks critical questions that, to my knowledge, NFP promoters cannot and have not answered.

My NFP book is now available!

This is a compilation of my blog posts on NFP, along with some extra commentary and explanation. Click on the image to go to Amazon and see the full description. Available on Kindle, too.

Zeal For Thy House is available!

This is a compilation of my posts on the liturgy - liturgical abuse, music in the liturgy, the Novus Ordo, and the Traditional Latin Mass. "Glimmers of Hope" are also included to show that progress IS being made! Click on the image to order at Amazon. It's available on Kindle, too.

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My husband and I live in Baker City, Oregon. I care deeply about the liturgy, and pray ardently for the "reform of the reform". I think we've strayed far from our Catholic identity over the last 50 years, and we need to return to the traditional teachings of the Church in order to regain lost ground.